They therefore missed the terrible pall that fell over the Prime Minister’s performance from about halfway through, the awful rumness of hearing him claim that he now had a ‘great team’ and that a bright dawn was at hand.

‘Great team’, indeed! No team with Bob ‘Bollocks’ Ainsworth as Defence Secretary can be considered good, let alone great. The nickname, since you

wonder, comes from the time Mr Ainsworth shouted that word in a Commons debate.

Not one of life’s refined tastes, our Bob. The Chiefs of Staff should prepare themselves for fish suppers.

The panic at Downing Street yesterday was palpable, not just from this exhausted Labour leader’s frazzled, frayed manner – picking arguments with media underlings, even.

It was apparent from the way he repeated himself. He kept saying, ‘I am not arrogant, I am not complacent.’ Not arrogant?

He insists on remaining head of government even in these circumstances, yet says he is not arrogant?

The internal wiring was starting to fail. He talked about how Andy Burnham had been a ‘very good minister of state’ and would do well in Cabinet. He meant to refer to Ben Bradshaw.

JUST look at the way Mr Bradshaw has been treated and you will see the true colour of the Brown premiership. For years Bradshaw has been one of the ablest ministers in the Commons yet he has never had a sniff of Cabinet until now because he was not liked by the Scottish Labour mafia.

It is extremely decent of him to help out Mr Brown in what could well prove to be the last days of the Reich.

Mr Brown, despite repeated claims about his own honesty – it was something his clergyman father had taught him – would not confirm that he had plotted to move Alistair Darling from the Treasury. Many at Westminster simply will not believe that.

‘I fight on,’ he said. Mrs Thatcher said the very same words after the first round of her last leadership battle. She went a few hours later.

After this vignette, this amazing and unedifying scramble, it is hard to see Mr Brown avoiding the same fate.